


Something Old, Something New

by asktheravens



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mentions of miscarriage, Old Age, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asktheravens/pseuds/asktheravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a lifetime of waiting, Loki has finally agreed to marry Thor.  But after all this time, is that going to be enough?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Old, Something New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisdorkyficthing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisdorkyficthing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/93335) by thisdorkyblogthing. 



> This started out as a continuation of this lovely thing: http://thisdorkyblogthing.tumblr.com/post/94305330512/ and thank you SO MUCH for letting me play with it!
> 
> I ended up expanding and finishing it as my Thorloki Week Secret Santa gift for odnson, who requested something that showcased the longevity of their relationship.

“Are you even listening to me right now?” Loki’s voice had risen to the shrill, warning pitch that always called Thor back from wherever his thoughts had strayed.

“Of course, of course,” he lied.He’d actually been thinking about how he wished his pride had given out _before_ his knees.He wanted another log or six on the fire to loosen his joints, but he refused to ask for it.And Loki liked the cold.

“Well, which one do you prefer?” Loki gestured to the table, spread with such a jumble of fabrics, charts, and lists that he had no hope of piecing together what, specifically, was awaiting his consideration.

“Oh, let’s have the green one,” Thor said.This seemed safe. There was always a green one.And the green one was always the right answer.

“The green one.”

“Indeed!I am entirely and completely enchanted by the green one.I think we should have green everything.Unless you want some other color.”

“I was asking you about the mead, you lying old fool.I thought that, at least, might interest you.”

“Whatever it is, it will be the sweetest tasting, most delightful liquid that ever touched my tongue, for it will be served at my wedding.”Thor left unsaid that, at this age, he would be drunk after three glasses and pay for it the next morning.

“We’ll have the one I can actually stand, then, if you aren’t going to participate.I have to share your cup.Now… about this…” Loki fluttered about the table, picking up objects and just as quickly setting them down.Thor thought he caught the sparkle of a tear in his betrothed’s eye.

“It can wait.Come here.”

“It can’t wait!There’s still so much I have to do, and only a day left to do it.”

“It can all wait.And you don’t have to do it yourself.We have people for this, Loki.Let them do their jobs.”

“No!It has to be perfect.Every bit, every tiny detail.I’ve… we’ve waited so _long_ , and I have to make it up to you.”

“Loki.Come here.”Thor held his hand out and Loki, after a moment, set down the napkin swatches and the five conflicting music lists and took it.He let Thor draw him in and coax him into his lap.He straddled Thor, but didn’t put his full weight on him.

“I have things to do,” he said.Thor didn’t listen.He stroked the line of Loki’s back and his strong fingers worked at the knotted muscles in his shoulders and the base of his neck.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Thor said.“I want you to stand up and say the words.The rest is just dressing.I want you to be happy, and that’s all.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a pretty bride?” Loki relaxed under Thor’s hands, but he still heard the brittleness in his voice.

“I have the best,” he said.

“I’m no bride, Thor!”

“Are you sure?None of these tasks involve a lacy garter for me to remove with my teeth?”

“No, of course not.This is a classy affair.”

“Pity.”

“Maybe after the ceremony, when we’re alone.If you think you can get on your knees and back up again.”

“Only for you, dear,” Thor said.His hands had already started to ache, but Loki had his eyes shut and his lips parted in pleasure and Thor found the pain almost pleasant.He longed to undress Loki, take off the stiff robes and the stiffer, boned frame of Loki’s back brace (for he’d learned long ago not to call it a corset, and to always speak of it as medical necessity, never Loki’s vanity to want a trim waist), get out the scented oil, and do this properly.

“But I mean it.Don’t you want someone younger?Someone who could give you the things I cannot?”Loki persisted, and Thor knew he wouldn’t submit to his attentions just yet.

“I could ask you the same thing.I’m older than you, if you will recall.But there is only one thing I’ve ever wanted that you wouldn’t give me, and I’ll get that when you say the vows and wear the ring.” He took Loki’s hand and willed him to hear it, and believe it, but his brother went stiff in his arms.

“There is one other thing you always wanted that I couldn’t give you,” Loki whispered.“Though I did try.”He used to come to Thor in a woman’s shape, every month beneath the thin shiv of the new moon, and beg the Norns to quicken his borrowed womb.They had, one time that Thor knew about, and had things gone differently Loki would have accepted his proposal years ago, and perhaps Thor would be retired and spending his days in the sun with his grandchildren.But the blood came, and the pain, and their happiness ended, and many new moons passed before Loki came to him again.  That had been the wettest spring in Asgard's long memory, as the sky wept to make up for her king's dry eyes.  Thor's quiet sadness had been worse than any rage.  Loki had never told Thor of the others, dead before they had even quickened, only buried his stained sheets and clothes in tiny, unmarked graves beneath their mother’s rosebushes.

“I wanted you more,” Thor told him.Loki had not brought up the lost children in more years than filled a century, and it boded ill that he thought of them now.  

“Then you are a fool,” Loki said, bitter as a winter wind.He knew he should have sent Thor to another, a true woman who would fill his hall with laughter, but he could never do it.They both knew without saying it that it would have ended their arrangement permanently had Thor gotten heirs with someone else.Thor had chosen him in days and years of silence that spoke more than all his declarations and proposals ever could.

“So you tell me, every day that we breathe.But come, my love, show me the crystal and the flowers and the napkins, and let me give you my opinion so you can disregard it in good cheer.Unless you’d like to lie down with me, and rest until lunch?”Thor slid his hands down Loki’s back, over the curve of his buttocks and down the length of his thighs, and Loki felt the familiar heat begin to rise in Thor’s lap.

“Oh no you don’t,” Loki scolded.He swatted Thor’s hands away.“That’s bad luck.In fact, I don’t think I should even see you until it’s time.”He got up and felt the blood flowing more freely in his shoulders and neck.His back popped down its length and ended with a solid clunk in his hips, pain and relief mixing.He already missed Thor’s hands, but at the same time he couldn’t bear them any longer.He needed to find a task, and quickly, before his thoughts ruined more than a moment’s libido.“Besides, don’t you have to listen to precisely eighty-seven petitions before you can consider the royal schedule clear for our honeymoon?”

“Bah,” Thor waved his hand in irritation.“I hate them.Makes my ass fall asleep to even think about it.”

“Try not to ruin everything beyond repair without my sage advice,” Loki told him.He gathered his assorted tasks and tried to organize them, and his mind.In the months since he’d accepted Thor’s proposal, he’d been able to drown out the old litany of doubt and self-loathing with the minutiae of planning the event, and frequent infusions of Thor’s enthusiasm, but the demon inside him that spoke with his own voice had gained a foothold again.In desperation, Loki sought out the royal seneschal and told him that they would have to do another top-to-bottom reorganization of the seating charts and processionals, because it would take all afternoon and cause the man, and his staff, untold needless suffering.Nothing helped misery like spreading it around, he’d decided.

 

Loki never stopped talking from the time he came through the door that stood as a formality between their suites and the time he fell asleep, usually wrapped in Thor’s arms.Thor often groused about this, but tonight he had to admit that he missed the sound of his voice.His rooms were so quiet that the crack of logs in the fire startled him, and his bed felt enormous and cold.Loki should be at the dressing table, combing his long silver-touched hair, but he remained in his own chambers in preparation for the wedding day.Thor wrapped another bear pelt around his shoulders and took the brush he had given his brother years ago.He combed his own hair (which had gone entirely white, like their father’s, the same year that Loki stopped coming to him in a borrowed shape altogether) with it as though it would take the place of Loki’s long, sure strokes, as though the jade serpent carved in the handle could substitute for Loki’s hand in his.

Thor had asked to marry on the Winter Solstice, an auspicious time for new beginnings.Loki had agreed, and even joked about their wedding night being the longest night of the year, but now that it drew near the endless dark and cold left Thor tired, aching, and afraid.He couldn’t sleep and he tried not to blame the disruption in his routine, but Loki would have… well, Loki knew many ways to soothe him.His concentration wandered from the dispatches he strained to read by firelight, and his weary eyes kept settling on the heavy folds of his bridal suit hanging in the corner.At last he got up and dragged the entire wardrobe closer to the head of the bed so he could hold the thick scarlet wool and run the fur lining through his fingers.He’d never thought to be nervous when this day came, yet here he was fretting like a teenager.

He woke some time later in the deep dark of the second longest night of the year to find Loki had joined him in bed.He dropped the sleeve of his wedding tunic with a start of guilt, partly for being caught sleeping with it and partly for wrinkling it.The fire had burned down and the air outside his blankets and furs numbed his face and burned his lungs with its oppressive cold.Loki sat on the bed in the same light dressing gown he wore year round.He had let his hair down but never finished combing it, and his hands worked in his lap with the papery sound of dry skin rubbing together.The cold bit into Thor’s heart and he knew what Loki wanted to say before the words ever crossed his lips.

“Thor.I’ve… I’ve changed my mind,” he said.He didn’t look up or meet Thor’s eyes.“I cannot do it.”  Years of practice let Thor keep his face still, but he looked away from Loki, into the darkness.

“I’ll summon the seneschal.We can call it off.”It was too late for much of it, of course.Guests had arrived and food sat ready for the feasting.But they could call it a Yule party and no one would say anything to his face.He felt no anger, only a numb lack of surprise.He’d been a fool to expect anything different, really; autumn was a time for dying, and this was the last night before winter.He would bury this final dream deep in the snow and never ask again.

“I still want to marry you,” Loki said.His hand caught Thor’s arm and he hesitated.

“You do?” Thor asked.He couldn’t bring himself to look back, afraid of what he would see in Loki’s face, but he waited to see what else he would say.

“I do.I should have said yes years ago.And I know I asked for all of this,” his vague but expressive hand movement took in Thor’s elaborate wedding clothes, but also all the rest of the planning that pressed upon them like an invisible weight.“But it was a distraction, something to keep me from thinking about things I didn’t want to think about, and I’ve changed my mind.You said that all you wanted was to hear me say the words, and you would be happy.Did you mean that?”

“If you mean it when you say the vows, then yes.All I want is you,” Thor said.This was not entirely true.Thor had wanted everyone, or at least everyone who was still alive, to see him wed.But if he could not have it, he would trade it to hear the promise spoken aloud between them.

“Then take me away.We can start our honeymoon early, or wherever you would like, just so long as it’s private.The words are only for you.”Thor knew many people, even people who cared about them both, had wondered why Thor was so fixed on Loki, but the truth was that much of Loki had always been only for Thor.

“You want to elope with me?At our age?” Thor turned back to Loki and smiled, and it spread to Loki’s face.The dim firelight flattered his narrow face and hid the lines at his mouth and eyes.Under the loosened skin and sharpened bones, Thor still saw the young Loki he’d first fallen in love with.

“Yes.If we’re young enough to marry, we’re young enough to elope.”Loki offered Thor his hands, and Thor took them.“It’s not as if the meat pies and mead will go to waste.”

“I was looking forward to the cake,” Thor said.He brought Loki’s fingers to his lips and kissed each swollen knuckle and the blue veins under his thin, soft skin.He’d gotten the last Dark Elves in the Realms to bake it because Loki insisted.They were the only race to truly master baking with magic, and depending on who one asked, the cake tasted like heaven and got you drunk, or it tasted like ashes but it brought visions of the past and future.

“Are you the king or aren’t you?” Loki asked.“Make them save you some cake.Make them save you the whole cake, if you like.”

“Maybe I will,” Thor said.He was not sure he wanted to know their future, but he would take his chances.He let go of Loki’s hands and stood up, wincing at the cold.

“They probably poisoned it anyway,” Loki said.“You know how Dark Elves are.What are you doing?”

“Stretching my knee,” Thor grumbled.“Damn thing is locked up again.”

“I meant why are you out of bed?”

“So I can go hitch up the goats and we can elope,” Thor said.

“Oh no, we are not leaving in the middle of the night.You will catch your death out there.”

“I will not!” Thor bristled.

“You aren’t as young as you used to be,” Loki said mildly.“And I have no desire to nurse you through another bout of break-bone fever when I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon.So come back to bed.”  

“But our wedding…”

“We can leave in the morning, before the servants have even broken the ice on your water basin.”

“You promise.”

“Yes I promise.Now come here.I’m cold.”Thor sighed and slid back under the furs and into Loki’s welcoming arms.Loki tucked a heavy fold of woven wool around him and stroked long fingers through Thor’s unbraided hair.Thor rested his head on Loki’s chest and settled against him, while his brother nestled his bony, frigid feet into the warm crooks of Thor’s knees.

“Can I wear my new clothes?” Thor asked.His eyes drifted closed.

“You can wear your disreputable boar’s hide overcoat with the bald patches, if it please you,” Loki said.“I’m feeling charitable.”

“Mmmm,” Thor murmured, and he drifted off to sleep with a smile on his lips.

 

Thor awoke alone in the dark, but he was not worried.The day of the winter solstice would be half over before the weak dawn broke over the horizon, and the light would only last a few hours.Even the fire in his personal bedchamber had been allowed to burn down to gray embers in accordance with tradition, but he lingered a moment over the scraps of heat that still radiated from the hearth.He dressed without aid and hurried through the cold and quiet dark of his palace, though he knew there were a few souls awake and hard at work already.He crept into the cavernous, fragrant warmth of the kitchen and wove past tables stacked high with pies and roaring ovens filled with meat and bread, the air before them shimmering and steamy.A young assistant darted in front of him balancing a tottering stack of dirty pots and bowls, and if Thor had not stopped short they would have wound up on the floor together, covered in gravy and jam.The girl’s eyes met his and went wide with shock, but she made a passable curtsy without dropping anything.Thor smiled and held a finger to his lips, motioning her to secrecy.She grinned back and somewhere farther in the kitchen the cook yelled at her to stop dawdling and check the bacon.She jumped and scurried off again, but she smiled back at Thor for another moment.He lifted a loaf of bread, a cheese, a rope of sausages, and a pot of honey into his traveling bag and turned to leave, but returned for another moment and took a pair of pies as well.

He found Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder in their shared stall.Unlike their master, they had each taken hundreds of concubines over the course of their long lives and the palace grounds were crowded with their kids and grandkids.They knew the tread of Thor’s feet and the smell of his clothes, and they greeted him at the door.He offered them a pilfered apple and chuckled fondly as they snapped at it with forgotten dignity.

“My friends,” he said.The cranky old things allowed Thor to scratch their snowy muzzles as they dripped chewed fruit on his wedding tunic.“It seems you will have to serve as my groomsmen and witness both.”

“You cannot spare one to act as a bridesmaid, I suppose,” Loki muttered behind him.Thor turned and beamed at him so brightly that Loki took half a step back, but when his brother offered him his arm, he took Thor’s hand and walked into his embrace.Though Loki wore a long wrap to conceal his form, Thor draped his cloak over Loki so that they shared its warmth and Loki rested against his shoulder.

“Which one would you like?” Thor asked him.

“Neither.I am, as you may have noticed, no bride.I give myself away and offer you no possible substitute should you find me unsatisfactory.”

“I am glad you came,” Thor said.Some lingering tightness in his chest relaxed as he held Loki in the curve of his body.“I don’t need anyone else.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” Loki said, and neither of them mentioned the many previous promises Loki had made.

“You did.Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

 

Thor did not waste time.He had faith in Loki, even after all these years, but he could not give him any extra time to change his mind.He hitched his faithful goats (indeed they had not tried to escape him in earnest for many years) and offered Loki a gallant hand up into his chariot.Then the quiet, moonlit grounds were racing past them as the wheels rumbled through the air and icy wind-blown snow stung their faces.

“Slow down,” Loki snapped.The rushing air had blown his hood back from his elaborate hair, bringing the scent of perfumed oil to Thor’s nose along with the tinkling sound of silver ornaments as the cold draft tugged at the whipping braids.

“Of course,” Thor said.Truly, his mounts could not have run much longer anyway, before bad joints and weak lungs began to take their toll.He reined them in and the goats bellowed in affronted (and affected) protest before they continued at a pace just above an amble.Thor took in the hills and plains below them, the fallow fields and impenetrable pine forests blanketed alike in thick snow.The Bifrost Bridge shimmered above them, so bright tonight that he knew the mortals down on Midgard could see its rainbow bands, and shifting light washed the white surface of the world in a gleaming kaleidoscope of colors.Beyond it, the stars winked in the dark indigo velvet of the sky, but Thor could feel a storm in the air, and in his bones, and knew that more snow would fall before the next sunset.  

They rode in silence, without the need for words, and reached their destination just after the pale light of sunrise had brightened the world.The daybreak gave off scarcely more light than the moon and stars had, and the sun would set again within hours to admit the longest night of the year.Clouds rolled in, thick and gray, and the wind stilled at last.Thor could feel the storm all around him, and the world thrumming with the promise of a new year about to be born.The mortals believed it quite literally, that the Great Mother, heavily pregnant with the child of the dead year gone by, was even now laying down to begin the night of labor that would allow light and warmth to return to the world.He smiled to think of it, for the many years of their lives were the only children they had ever had, and he hoped to have a few more yet.He’d chosen the Winter Solstice for their wedding, the one input Loki had allowed him, because it was a time of new beginning and putting aside what had ended.

“Do you know this place?” he asked Loki.He tethered the goats to a towering spruce, though he knew that if they ran off it would only be to return to the warmth of their barn.

“Of course.My memory is better than yours, if you recall,” Loki teased, though Thor’s memory was much better than either of them chose to acknowledge.He took Thor’s offered arm and they walked down an overgrown path into a copse of thick, dark pine and the silvery bones of bare birch.The path led to a deep pool, its milky water steaming in the pale slant of daylight that fell through the trees.In summer, the place was hidden entirely, a quality that had drawn them to it as young men long ago.Hot, steaming water splashed down a bank of rocks from a spring in the side of a sheer, stony cliff, white and oddly scented from the minerals in it.The flat stones around the pools edge had a thin skin of ice that constantly melted and refroze, but they both knew the water in the pool would be hot as a freshly-drawn bath even in the dead of winter.

“The first place we ever… where we fell in love,” Thor said, almost to himself.It seemed for a moment that they had both become lost in time, and that the lithe and laughing Loki of his long-spent youth now stood next to him and marveled that their afternoon tryst in the trees had given him such a long-lasting hold on Thor’s heart.

“I fell in love with you long before,” Loki murmured, and Thor knew that the spell had him as well.He wondered how he appeared in his brother’s excellent memory.“This is just where you tricked me into admitting it.”

“It’s the first place I asked you to marry me, as well,” Thor said.

“And the first place I refused you,” Loki agreed.

“It seemed a good place to be wed,” Thor said, just a hint of a question in his voice.

“You chose well.Too bad our hunting cabin will have long ago fallen to lumber and dust.”

“A shame,” Thor said, carefully toneless.He was not king for nothing, and he kept a few secrets of his own.

“Let’s be about it, then,” Loki said.“It isn’t getting any warmer.”

“Give me your hand,” Thor said. He pulled the thick mitts and and then the gloves off his stiff, reddened fingers.

“A moment,” Loki said.“You’ve waited this long, you can give me long enough to do the thing properly.”Loki unfastened the long cloak, his bare fingers no less white or nimble despite the damp chill.He pulled back his hood and let the whole thing fall away, revealing his long-planned wedding robes.A thousand rich shades of green shimmered through the fine fabric and a deceptively simple tangle of embroidered knots accented the severe line of it with burnished gold.It was perfectly Loki, and he appeared to Thor as timelessly beautiful as the night sky.Thor tried to speak, but found no words came out.He only smiled, and after a moment Loki’s veneer of frosty perfection cracked and he grinned back.He pushed Thor’s cape back from his shoulders as the first fat flakes of snow began to fall, but he did not remove it.Thor had felt his wedding tunic did not do a good enough job of hiding the softness in his belly, and that the golden trim only showed how much gold his own hair had lost.He was conscious of the apple the goats had dripped on him.He brushed down the soft wool, staring at his feet, but Loki took his hand with his long, cold fingers and Thor raised his gaze.When their eyes met, he saw the golden warrior he had once been in Loki’s eyes, and he knew he need not be concerned for his appearance.He had heard that all brides are beautiful, and all bridegrooms handsome, but he had never truly understood it until he stood on numb feet in the snow and silence of a forgotten hot spring.

“Loki,” he breathed.

“Thor.”

“I’ve loved you for so long,” he began.They had driven the seneschal mad through the interminable months of planning with their refusal to write down or reveal their vows, but Thor had wanted to let the words come easily.He never did well with prepared speeches, and he would never have this chance again.“You’ve given me so much.Will you now give me the one thing you’ve withheld?”

“I have given you my body,” Loki agreed.“My heart, though I’ve not always acted it.Many, if not all, of my secrets.What would you have from me?”

“Promise me that you will be with me, for the rest of our lives.Wear my ring, and be openly and in name what you’ve been for so long in private.”

“A wife?” Loki said, one brow arched in skepticism.

“A spouse,” Thor amended.“A partner.Be _mine_ , Loki.”

“And what will you give me in return?”

“I’ll be yours,” Thor said.“Body and heart, until my death and even beyond, if that proves possible.”

“Thor.You know my love for you has never wavered, no matter how I might have acted.Do you know what you are asking?”

“I do,” Thor nodded, and Loki studied him for a few extra heartbeats.

“Then I accept.”Loki produced a heavy, plain ring with one of his little sleights of hand.Though Thor’s fingers were chapped red, fading to white and blue where the blood had failed against the cold, Loki slid the ring onto him with ease.“Thor, I promise to be your spouse, to the best of my ability, until my death and possibly beyond.I will love and aid you, care for you and show you the truths you need to see.”Thor gave him a moment to continue, but Loki had no intention of promising to honor or obey him.Thor fumbled his own ring out of his robe, a slender silver-white serpent with its tail in its mouth.The metal gleamed even in the dim, fading light and Loki could feel a lingering warmth in it from where it had been against Thor’s skin as he allowed Thor to place it on his finger.

 “Loki, I promise to be your spouse, to the best of my ability, until my death and possibly beyond.”Thor’s lips quirked in a smile as he repeated Loki’s own words.“I will love and aid you, comfort and care for you and protect you from all harm.”They stood in the swirling snow, hands and eyes locked, as the weight of their promises sunk in.The rings were only a few ounces at most, yet they each felt the new weight on more than just their fingers.

“Now we kiss, if I recall,” Loki said, and with matching smiles they brought their cold lips together.Loki found a hidden catch within his deceptively simple robe and undid it as Thor’s lips grew warm against his mouth.His gown slithered apart, split neatly down the side, and Loki let it slide down his white arms.He left it in a pool of fabric and enjoyed the feeling of Thor’s arms against his bare skin.

“You’ll freeze,” Thor protested.

“No I won’t,” Loki promised.They both knew why he never felt the cold like Thor did, but it was one of the things they never spoke of.Thor kissed him again and began to unbutton his own clothing.

“You really will freeze,” Loki said, his fingers light on the back of Thor’s hand.

“Then help me, so we can get in faster.”Though his skin was cold and white, Loki’s hands were no less nimble from his time in the icy wind and he soon had Thor naked and shivering in the scanty shelter of the trees.Loki took his hand and they stepped into the steaming, milky water of the hot spring.The stone ledge they had improvised so many years before was still there, sturdy as ever, and Thor sank in to his neck.He winced as the hot water stung and burned his chilled body, but Loki’s hands found him and he sighed in contentment as they traced over him.Loki straddled his thighs with the ease of long practice.He felt the rigid length of Thor’s cock so close to his own, but he did not hurry to get to it.In their youth, he would have gone for it with the desperate thirst of a man who had been at sea for two days, surrounded on all sides by water he could not drink.Now he lingered over the knots in Thor’s muscles, the old and faded puckers of scar tissue, the familiar gather of skin and flesh at his belly; they were wedded now, and there was no need to rush, or hide.Thor nuzzled into his neck and kissed Loki’s throat and collarbone.His fingers, rough with callus, stroked Loki’s ribs and the bony ridge of his spine with practiced tenderness.

“You used to fuck me like a hurricane making landfall,” Loki murmured in his ear.“Like the end of the world.”Thor’s hands moved lower, then, stroking over Loki’s ass, but he remained gentle and unhurried.

“Is that what you want?”

“I want to know that I’m what you want,” Loki said.

“I just promised you,” Thor said.His foreplay continued, slow and soft and relentless as the falling snow.“I never knew if it would be the last time,” he said.  

“You still don’t,” Loki pointed out, but Thor did not react to his teasing.Like the snow, he would soon bury Loki’s will to wait.

“Then I don’t want my last time to be rushed,” Thor said.He worked Loki open with a finger and Loki’s spine curled into the familiar touch.Heat rushed through his body that did not come from the spring and he gasped.

“How do you always do this,” he asked, but Thor only grinned.Loki leaned into him, resting some of his weight against Thor’s chest, closed his eyes and waited for the pleasure to take him away.His hands went to Thor’s cock, ready to guide him in.

“Loki,” Thor said, in such a way that Loki stopped and opened his eyes.Thor paused for the first time, and met his eyes.“Will you do something for me?”

“Yes,” Loki said, surprising them both, but he found that he meant it.Thor had waited.Thor had persevered.He had earned whatever boon he might ask.“Though I cannot imagine what you could want to get up to at our age that we haven’t already tried.”

“Let me see you,” Thor pleaded.

“What do you mean?” Loki asked.He kept his tone light, but cold sweat prickled against the back of his neck.“I’m right here.”

“No, let me see _you_ ,” Thor insisted.“As you really are.Just for tonight, let me see you without any of your illusions.”

“Why would you want that?” Loki asked.He did not try, here, on the night of his wedding, to pretend that he had no illusions to dispel.

“You see me all the time.Even when you cast them on me, you still know the truth.I want to see your true face.”Loki studied Thor a moment and considered.He had enchanted Thor before, especially after that fever two winters before when he’d looked so haggard, so that Asgard would never see the toll she took on her king.But that was Thor, who was always just as he appeared.

“You might be sorry you asked,” Loki said.“I maintain them for you.”That was only half true, and they both knew it, but Thor let it pass.

“My love, you could show me the face of Hel herself and I would desire you no less.”

“Honestly, Thor, you know it’s terrible bad luck to utter her name, especially tonight!”

“So have a little faith in me,” Thor continued.

“Very well,” Loki muttered.“But only because you asked me here and now.After tonight, I will just be insulted and have no idea what you are talking about if you ask about my illusions again.”

“Fair enough,” Thor nodded.He studied Loki with curious eyes and Loki’s skin crawled to do the working with an audience.He closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and for the first time in centuries he let go.When he opened them again, Thor still stared in wonder.Though he had no mirror, Loki knew what to expect.His skin had loosened and spotted in places.Dark veins stood out against the papery, bony length of his hands.His eyes had sunken and various parts of his body that had appeared slim and taut before now revealed sagging, rolls, and wrinkles.He cringed, feeling more naked than he ever had in his life.

“What about this?” Thor asked.He stroked Loki’s long hair.

“Oh no.Thor, it… It takes so long to get the silver strands in the right place, you can’t want to see it like it…”

“Like it really is,” Thor said.“I do want to see.”Loki let his last illusion slip and he felt cold air on his scalp as his hair thinned and receded, but Thor smiled and continued to stroke it.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“Liar,” Loki said, but without heat.He could tell Thor was not lying.Thor explored his body with hungry hands and the tension drained from Loki’s spine.

“I’ll show you how true it is,” Thor promised, and Loki smiled behind closed eyelids. The hot, thick water swirled and bubbled all around them.It intensified the flush of Thor’s cheeks and the heat in his eyes, while Loki found he was mostly grateful that it took much of the strain where the thin skin of his knees met the slippery stone of the seat.He rose up on quivering thighs and lowered himself onto Thor.Their bodies locked together and they shuddered in unison.Hands nestled into their accustomed places, Thor’s on the small of Loki’s back and Loki’s against Thor’s collarbone, and they moved in the comfortable rthym that governed their lives.Thor no longer surprised Loki in anything except his continued desire, and he lavished affection on Loki’s thin, aching body.They came together and Loki lay curled against Thor’s chest, his nose barely out of the water.Thor’s hand still stroked up and down his spine, languid and possessive, and Loki found he kept toying with his new ring, twisting it around and around his finger.Thor rested his cheek on the top of Loki’s head, and his other hand combed through the long locks of Loki’s hair that floated near the surface, now more silver than dark.Loki caught it and drew it in front of him.He kissed the heavy golden band on Thor’s finger and wrapped his arms around Thor’s chest.He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to absorb the change between them, as small and significant as the change from autumn to winter.Thor’s heart thudded against his face, the beat steady and slowing after their brief exertion.  

“Are you ready to go back?” Thor asked.Loki felt no tension or rush in his body; they had their entire honeymoon before them, and plenty of time to be together.

“We can’t,” Loki said.“They won’t even have the first course cleared away yet.”He did not regret his promise to Thor, not yet, but he had no desire to see all the people he had refused to include in his wedding.

“Not back to the castle,” Thor said.“There’s somewhere much closer.”

“The old cabin?” Loki said.Thor’s eyes fell just an increment, as though Loki had spoiled a surprise.“But it must be in ruins by now.”He’d fully expected to be dragged to some mountain in Midgard, or the gold-and-sugar paradise of Alfheim.

“Let’s see how bad it is, after all these years,” Thor said.He stood and lifted Loki with him as though he would carry him all the way, but Loki slid out of his grasp.Steam rose from Thor’s pink skin and snow flakes became tiny beads of water as soon as they touched him.The sun had set as quietly as it had risen, and only a few long streaks of pink still tinted the horizon.

“Put your coat on, you old fool,” Loki said fondly.He shook the crust of snow from Thor’s cloak and wrapped it around his husband’s shoulders.He shrugged into his own cloak, more for dignity than any real need, and gathered the rest of their clothes in his arms, but Thor scooped him up again.Out here, with only the goats and the swollen moon to see him, he allowed Thor to carry him like a bride, out of the sheltering pines and up a low, icy rise to the wreck of the little hunting cabin they’d frequented so many times in their youth.Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder followed after Thor with a long-suffering glare, but Loki wrapped his bare arms around Thor’s neck and breathed him in, the thud of his pulse and the metallic but not unpleasant scent of mineral water drying on his skin.

Warm light glowed from the shuttered windows and a comforting curl of woodsmoke came from the chimney.Though humble, the cabin looked snug and cozy as ever, and a blanket of snow tucked up to it, smooth and unbroken by any footprints save their own.

“Did you know about this?” Loki asked.“Or did you just assume that our cabin would not dare to disappoint you by being a ruin?”

“I had a few plans laid by, is all,” Thor shrugged.“I thought it would be wise to have our little nest ready.”The door swung in easily and a warm draft greeted them, bearing the scents of roasted meat and simmering spiced wine.Thor carried him across the threshold and set him down with a kiss.“I’d better put the boys away,” he said with a grin.“Before they try to eat the shutters.Look around,” he suggested.

“Put your boots…” Loki started, but the door clicked shut behind Thor and he made a frustrated tutting sound instead.Let Thor just try and come down with pneumonia.Loki spread their clothes out near the fire to dry the snow from them, and he looked around the little cabin.Just one room, with a big bed at the back still spread with the same soft-worn blankets and balding furs he remembered.Same wide stone hearth, and their initials carved within a crude heart in the central beam of the low ceiling.How angry he had been when Thor had done that!Even then, Thor had chafed at having to hide their relationship.He’d wanted to mark it somewhere, even if it was just a hard to see spot in a rarely-used hunting lodge.But Loki had been afraid, afraid someone would see it, and afraid that it was as permanent as Thor wanted to imply, for above all else he had feared he would never stop feeling the way he felt about Thor.

Unseen hands had spread the old, splintery table with covered dishes.The savory scent of their feast wafted from the chipped stoneware that he remembered, the plain brown glaze and numerous cracks and scars at odds with the luxuriant table linens someone had added.The jewel-deep gleam of ruby and emerald silk reminded him that they had not gone back in time, as it appeared, and that he was now (and forever) a married man.He ran his fingers over the slick fabric and peeked under the lids, enjoying himself.He refused to analyze the nervous flutter in his stomach that kept his appetite in check, but he knew Thor must be starving.

The fire popped and startled him, and he turned his head around expecting Thor before his mind caught up to the sound.When he turned back, his eye caught the low shelf under the window and he went to it like an old friend.His knees creaked and his hips groaned, but he stooped down to look at his books.How they had remained here, he couldn’t explain, but he must have left them; to think otherwise meant that Thor had remembered all the titles and their order for centuries.He traced the worn leather, the impressions where gilt had once highlighted the spines, and it seemed as though his fingers reread each volume with his slightest touch.Words long forgotten flitted through his mind and memories came to him of nights spent at the table, studying by dying firelight while Thor snored in post coital bliss among the sweaty furs.His hand stopped and he pulled out one slim, untitled volume.He opened it and fell into the words his younger self had committed to the paper in a breathless rush of spidery script.He found the page, not even by memory but by instinct, by the slight break in the binding that was the journal’s own memory.

 _I know what I am_ , he had written. _And I know what I want._ Loki felt the presence of that sharp-tongued, foolish boy, so green with pretension.He felt him within his own wrinkled skin, and remembered how those two sentences of declarative truth had set him free from a lifetime of confusion, lies, and masks.The icy knife’s blade of it had worn down over the years, and left its weight within him like a smooth river stone, but it was still the truth.He still knew what he was.And he had finally come to terms with what, or who, he wanted.

“What do you think, Loki?”Thor asked.He kicked his bare feet against the doorframe and dislodged a shower of slushy snow.Loki started up and nearly stumbled, for his bad leg had gone to sleep.He snapped the journal shut as though it could bite him.He had left it spread, open and provocative, many nights before, hoping that Thor would read it and he would not have to say it to him.As far as he knew, his worthy brother had never taken the bait.

“Did you know I would ask for this?”Loki said.“Did you doubt me all along?”

“I never doubted you,” Thor said.“But you are not the only one who lays plans, my love.”

“It’s just how I remember,” he admitted.“Except we never ate so well.”

“One of us had to cook it back then.It’s good to be the king, sometimes.”

Thor came to him and they fell into the bed like there had been no years between them.Thor slid Loki’s cloak over his narrow shoulders until it fell away and his fingers brought Loki’s nipples to hard points in an instant.Thor took his mouth but Loki drew back and frowned at him.

“You are like ice, you fool,” he said.He chafed Thor’s cold hands between his own and felt a pang of worry for his brother that would have been entirely alien to the journal-keeping boy who’d lost his innocence in this bed.That Loki could no more have foreseen Thor’s death than he could believed the sun would wink out and leave the realm eternal in frigid darkness.

“So warm me up,” Thor murmured.Loki’s body welcomed him easily, and Thor’s warming weight settled on him.Thor’s cool, chapped lips whispered over his throat and his own body began to respond, but Loki could not be so easily distracted.He wrapped covers and a great bearskin around his new husband, folding them into a cocoon, soft and heavy with musk.His hands found the old, faded scar that Thor had borne since the day of this bear’s death, and he wrapped jealous arms and legs around him and held him so tight he could feel Thor’s pulse between his thighs.

“I love you,” he sighed, his words so soft it might have been only a bit of breath, but Thor heard.Loki had never believed that some pretty words and a bit of jewelry could make a difference, and he had never let Thor see him without his illusions, not since the first night they were together.The firelight flattered Thor, concealed the wrinkles and scars of thousands of years of pain and sorrow and absolved Loki of his responsibility for causing many of them.It turned the silver in his hair to molten metal, and Loki hoped it had a similar effect on his own face.Loki felt the ghosts of the young princes they had been crowded close, but even then he had never opened himself this way.Thor could never have put it into words, but he felt it as well, and responded in kind.They made love like newlyweds in the same sway backed old bed that hosted their first fumbling adolescent fucking, and even Loki’s practiced tongue failed to describe how it was different from all the times before.

They took a break, somewhere in the timeless darkness of the longest night, and they ate their wedding feast in the comfortable silence that can exist between lovers who no longer need words.Even the cozy cabin seemed cold, though, and they returned to bed with a great slab of mince pie and two forks.By unspoken agreement, they left the sweetened cream on the windowsill to keep it cool for other, less orthodox uses they might find later.Loki opened the shutters and they watched the snow drift down outside.Thor picked out all the plums and got crumbs on the furs and left all the spiced apples for Loki.They abandoned the empty dish at the foot of the bed and Thor drifted off with Loki curled against his chest, but Loki stayed awake with Thor’s arm draped over him.Thor had feared Yule as a boy, he remembered.He had always been worried that the sun would not come back and it would be winter forever, and they had fallen into a habit of staying up together to keep a vigil.Thor usually dozed off then, too, as Loki recalled, but he didn’t mind waiting for dawn alone.Thor burned like a furnace against his back and the soft pelt tickled his nose with the mingled scents of sex and pie.Thor’s cock grew hard in his slumber and then relaxed, over and over, and Loki could mark the hours by its stirring.

He dozed, in the dead of the night, though his eyes remained open and he remained aware of Thor’s breath ruffling his hair.A sound called him back to wakefulness, though he could not have said what it was.Loki listened, tuned out Thor and the faint hush of the falling snow, and just as he was about to give up, he heard it again.He still could not have named it, but it had a plaintive quality he could not ignore.He sat up and Thor mumbled a sleepy protest.He rose in the cold air and followed the sound to the door, his mind refusing to admit that he knew what it was.He opened the cabin door and a damp, frigid draft intruded upon them.  

“Loki?” Thor asked, and Loki could hear the fear in his voice, but Loki wasn’t leaving.An impossible baby lay on a soft hump of snow just outside their door, and she reached for him and whimpered to be brought in.Trackless, pristine white lay all around, but there she was, her pale blue skin contrasted against her red blanket and the black curls of her hair.Lines as white and luminous as the moonlit snow that had birthed her stood out against her skin, but her eyes were the color of a summer sky and achingly familiar.Loki picked her up, his thoughts a tangled jumble that he could not have articulated.She placed one perfect little hand over his heart, and he was gone.As she looked up at him, the blue faded from her face and the intricate whorls of her markings vanished until she was the pale but normal color of Loki himself, and she smiled up at her new father.

“Loki, what is it?” Thor said from within the cabin.He could hear the bed rustling as Thor came to see, and he shut the door before he took another chill.

“A gift,” he said.All his natural distrust fell away and he felt the sense of something broken becoming, at long last, complete.“It looks like the Norns have brought us… something new.”

 

FIN 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In the spirit of collaboration, I let this end at a spot where someone else could pick it up, so feel free if you'd like.


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